Daniel Sauerwein

Hello, I am Daniel Sauerwein and I am the creator and head contributor for this blog. I am a Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of North Dakota and my fields are in North American History (with emphasis on new military history), Rural History, Public History and Geography. My areas of interest are in early American history, specifically military, which includes the Civil War and other early American wars.

I currently hold a Master of Arts degree from the University of North Dakota in History, with a major concentration in American history and a minor in Geography. My thesis explored camps of instruction in Illinois and focused on the transition from civilian to soldier as soldiers took their basic training in the camps. I also hold a Bachelor of Arts degree (magna cum laude) from Illinois College, with a major in History and double minors in Economics and Geography.

I currently serve as a History and Political Science Instructor at Northland Community and Technical College, where I teach US History, Western Civilization, American Minorities, and American Politics and Government. I will be teaching the second halves of US History and Western Civilization, as well as a course on the Civil War and Reconstruction, American Minorities, and State and Local Government in the spring semester.

I have taught United States to 1877 and United States since 1877 in the classroom and am currently teaching U.S. to 1877 online at the University of North Dakota. I previously taught North Dakota History and the U.S: The Roaring Twenties at Grand Forks Air Force Base for Lake Region State College, as well as courses on Historical Geography and Heritage Tourism. I also previously taught online courses in Western Civilization I and II and World War II.

I originally hail from Jerseyville, IL, but have lived in Missouri, Germany, Kansas, and Texas while my dad was in the Army. I have also visited 20 other states, Washington, DC, and five other countries in my life. Outside of my academic pursuits, I am involved with the Civil Air Patrol, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, and Sons of the American Legion. I also enjoy reading, writing, playing guitar, and firearms. I am an avid Civil War reenactor, currently serving as President/Lieutenant of Fifth Minnesota Infantry Regiment, Company D, where we do educational programming in the region, especially at Fort Abercrombie State Historical Site.

My areas of interest in the Civil War are camps of instruction, which are where soldiers took basic training, the Western theater of the war, and U. S. Grant. I like to focus on the soldiers from the “Old Northwest” (Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, etc.) as they are quite interesting and in many ways were better than their eastern counterparts.